GovernmentExecutive.com

The Office of Personnel Management is preparing to roll out a set of major improvements this month to improve job posting on its USAJOBS Web site, agency e-government officials said Friday.

The USAJOBS site provides a portal for job openings throughout the federal government and was redesigned last year under a 10-year contract with online search company Monster. Since then, the number of daily visits has increased more than tenfold. OPM officials now are planning to improve the job posting process for federal recruiters and standardize the format for job announcements on the site.

"This is a very major release," said Claire Gibbons, project manager for the Recruitment One-Stop program at OPM.

The new job posting template will avoid muddled, confusing or indirect job postings, according to Norm Enger, OPM's e-government program director. Recruiters will be presented with a step-by-step process for entering the job description, duties, required qualifications and application information. Job seekers will see each job presented in the same manner with a concise overview on the first page. Interested applicants can then click on tabs or hyperlinks for more detailed information.

"We don't have to expose every single reader to that" detailed information, Gibbons said.

OPM e-government officials were proud of what they say is a Web site driven by the comments of both recruiters and job seekers. They have closely linked their customer service staff with their online development personnel, so common complaints can be addressed, according to Gibbons.

Consumer results appear to indicate the effort has been a success. Before the site was redesigned, it received about 20,000 visitors each day. Now, after a broad e-mail and publicity campaign, the site receives almost 300,000 visitors on an average weekday.

USAJOBS' American Customer Satisfaction Index approval rating dropped precipitously immediately after the relaunch, but it has climbed steadily and is now above its previous level. The day the old site was shuttered, the ACSI rated USAJOBS at 71 on a scale of 100. The site now receives an average rating slightly above 75.

OPM officials are not yet able to measure the number of site visits that are actually converted into hired applicants, but that is a metric they are working on, according to Gibbons. Enger and Gibbons are pleased with the results of the contract with Monster, which has the potential of being worth as much as $62 million over 10 years. As a testament to the new site's popularity with the general population, a search for the word "jobs" on the powerful Google.com search engine returns USAJOBS as the third-ranked result.

With an aging federal workforce, broad exposure and popularity is important, Gibbons said, because "the federal government cannot be an also-ran in this process."

COMMENTS

• Changing the website doesn't address the real problem. I just received a notification from the Coast Guard regarding a decision on a position I applied for fourteen months earlier. A hiring process that takes fourteen months and only communicates with the applicant after a final decision has been reached is a broken process! It's actually a bit amusing that the Coast Guard thought I'd still be interested in working for them after hearing nothing for fourteen months. GovExec.com reader Posted May 5, 2004 8:36 AM
• The whole application process is too complex, with too many procedures, rules, such as "who may apply" and if you are in a "competitive position" and what all has to be on the application forms, and which ones to use. GovExec.com reader Posted April 12, 2004 8:40 AM